Ubuntu Speech Recognition App Enters Invite-Only Beta

Just a day ago, we introduced you to an upcoming Ubuntu speech recognition app, which looked pretty amazing in the featured demo video. Its author, James McClain, had promised the imminent release of the app to the public with an open source license. Ubuntu voice recognition app has now entered private beta, and the author wants interested parties to join in and help him make this app better before the eventual final release.

Ubuntu Speech Recognition enters beta before open-source release

Or so goes the reddit title where the author of Ubuntu Speech Recognition app declares the invite-only release of the app to public. Author notes:

"Please include with it what you intend to do in the beta, programming, design help, etc. Also just for fun, a link to your github or similar would be nice, I won't hold it against you. Please email ubuntuvoicerecognition@gmail.com to request your invite. When spots are closed I will change the description to CLOSED. So until then it is OPEN."

There's some legitimate concern from users as well, consider this for example:

Redditor bradmont notes: "The sad part is that this isn't actually a speech recognition engine, just a command parser. It piggybacks off of Google's speech recognition services, and executes commands based on the text Google returns. It sends all of your voice commands to Google's servers, opening exactly the same privacy concerns as the net-based dash search in the latest Unity release. Are there any sufficiently mature open-source speech recognition packages available that could make this work offline?"